Nothing rivets America’s attention like the fall of a superstar athlete. The recent roll of dishonor—Lance, Tiger, A-Rod, Manti Te’o, and, of course, JoePa—is a primer in the pathologies of sports heroes, sports media, and sports fans.

Newspapers, those that plaintively remain, should print their editions back to front, because the sports pages are where the nation’s true psychodramas rip open and flutter, exposing the hypocrisies we hold dear and destroying whatever illusions we still have hanging around the house. Celebrity athletes are just about the only giant-size mugs left in our infotainment arena whose falls from grace carry a steep drop from a lofty altitude, the classic arc of hubris. Cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong—even his name boasts an excelsior quality, like an American flag planted on the moon. Golfer Tiger Woods—the child prodigy turned Jedi master—seemed to pull the entire golf course along with him as he strode the greens, a corporate wet dream of an endorsement machine. New York Yankees third-baseman Alex Rodriguez—the telenovela-handsome franchise player whose well-hung nickname, A-Rod, proclaimed his prowess in the batter’s box, the stud logo of a future Hall of Famer. All three were cast from the legion of superheroes into the ranks of us mortal duds. After being pursued for years by rumors and accusations of drug cheating, Armstrong finally met his maker—America’s mother confessor, Oprah Winfrey—and, in a two-part interview, admitted with ice-veined candor to doping and being an “arrogant prick.” Woods has never recovered from that mercurial night when, two days after the publication of a National Enquirer exposé claiming he had had an affair with an outgoing lass named Rachel Uchitel, he smacked his Escalade S.U.V. into a tree and fire hydrant near his home and was reportedly rescued from the vehicle by his wife, Elin, who smashed the car windows with a golf club, a scene redolent of Greek myth. Alex Rodriguez—already in the Yankee doghouse for his post-season slumps, his prima donna preenings, his copping to taking performance-enhancing drugs (P.E.D.’s) from 2001 to 2003, and the curdled bromance with teammate Derek Jeter—now slinks around like a high-priced leper pariah as allegations of more recent purchases of banned substances have bubbled up from a fishy-sounding biogenetic clinic located in (where else?) Florida. For as the Bible and Carl Hiaasen teach, Florida is the root of all evil.

Although you practically need an advanced degree in outlaw pharmacology to understand the intricacies of juicing, masking agents, corticosteroids, glycerol infusions, and human growth hormones, the motive behind using them—the competitive edge they give, despite the legal and medical risks—is self-evident. They could spell the difference between a star and a superstar, a silver medalist and a Wheaties-box gold winner, a seven-figure salary and an oceanfront estate. It isn’t only ballplayers (Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Barry Bonds) and Olympic track-and-field blazers (Marion Jones, Ben Johnson) who have either admittedly or allegedly been chemically enhanced. The gladiator arena of professional wrestling is strewn with the bronzed corpses of steroid-pumped behemoths done in by enlarged hearts and liver failure, their futures sacrificed for a brief flourish of strutting fame. Similarly, it’s no Freudian mystery why a carefully constructed role model such as Tiger Woods, raised in a pressure cooker of perfectionism since he first fondled a putter, would raise a private ravenous revolt against repression by acting like Fredo in Las Vegas, diving headfirst into the nearest cocktail waitress. His wild side needed somewhere to roam. Greed, lust, rage, the quest for alpha status, and a bite of immortality—these are classic drivers. Once the money and applause fade, a scratchier desperation may set in as some athletes peddle their trophies or Super Bowl rings or even their bodies, as did former Olympic runner Suzy Favor Hamilton, exposed as a high-end Vegas escort who rented herself out for as much as $600 an hour, charging even more if the client insisted on seeing Carrot Top perform. It’s when we enter the deeper dungeons of pathology that the empathy responses go on the fritz. I’m still trying to comprehend the Bizarro World case of the double-amputee Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius—whose carbon-fiber prosthetics earned him the inevitable nickname “Blade Runner”—who shot his swimsuit-model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, four times on Valentine’s Day. Even a childhood spent watching TheTwilight Zone and The Outer Limits didn’t prepare me for such bionic melodrama. Just as I can’t fathom the movie appetite for torture porn, I will never be able to crack the heart of darkness that would explain Michael Vick, who, while a quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, owned and operated a kennel on his property where mostly pit bull terriers were trained and tortured for dogfighting—starved, beaten, drowned, hanged, electrocuted. He served prison time, made public acts of contrition, did charity work, and redeemed himself somewhat on the playing field with the Philadelphia Eagles, taking them into the wild-card playoffs in 2010. But now Vick’s football days are mostly done, and it all seems like a misshapen nightmare of a career, an inexplicable botch of promise.

In the curious case of the Notre Dame star linebacker and Heisman Trophy runner-up Manti Te’o—whose doomed torch-song romance with a dying girlfriend named Lennay Kekua went from a three-hankie saga to a mockfest when she turned out to be a fake—we float out of the meat and fever of pathology like a Chagall angel into a spacey postmodern amniotic sphere where everyone’s behavior has a big dopey question mark pasted on it. Manti Te’o, a devout Mormon, and we know how muddled they can be, may have been genuinely taken in by the hoax, but he embellished his side of the telephone saga with such violet brushwork that it gave rise to speculation that he was a closeted fan of Glee, milking the pathos to pass as a straightie. Asked by America’s sister confessor, Katie Couric, if he was gay, Te’o answered, “No, far from it. Far from it.” A denial couched in the classic language of overcompensation, but I don’t profess to know what gives with this guy, if I may speak clinically. The indisputable sexual confusenik in this saga is Te’o’s hoaxer, a beefy young man with the spelling-bee name of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who conducted his long-distance conversations with the footballer in vocal-drag falsetto and told America’s father confessor, Dr. Phil, that he has to “recover from homosexuality,” which he compared to drug addiction. Sports columnist Rick Telander wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “This whole thing is so nutsy that I believe it only could have happened at Notre Dame, where mythology trumps common sense on a daily basis.” Not even the late satirist Terry Southern could top for black comedy Te’o’s imaginary dead girlfriend being awarded the game ball after Notre Dame’s 13-6 victory over Michigan by Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, who gave it to Te’o to take back to Hawaii, presumably to place reverently on her grave, like a dinosaur egg.

Sportswriters and talk-radio hosts may expectorate their opinions like gobs of tobacco juice, the last throwbacks to the Front Page newsroom of wisecracking cynics and staccato stylists, Oscar Madisons in a world of Felix Unger metrosexuals, but beneath their crusty layers rests a soft caramel center. Many of them are as susceptible to a sob story as any Harlequin romance writer and are as attached to hallowed tradition as an ivy wall: complicit in the creation and upkeep of institutional mythos, be it the spirit of Notre Dame, the pin-striped pride of the Yankees, or, until the reckoning, the paternal order of “JoePa,” the affectionate nickname of Joe Paterno, Penn State football’s head coach for 46 years, a papal reign. Sainthood was almost assuredly his until the sexual-abuse scandal that exploded in 2011—involving his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was arrested and charged with more than 40 counts of sexual abuse of boys, and accusations of a cover-up by university officials, including Paterno—brought down the vaulted ceiling. National outrage and a cascade of sordid details compelled the university to relieve Paterno of his coaching duties, which provoked a protest riot by thousands of Penn State students, whose wrath and fury were understandable, if idiotic. Although the parallels to the priest scandals of the Catholic Church, whose hierarchical suppression of the scope of sexual abuse across its dioceses is still coming to light, are unmistakable, here in the United States the college football program is a far richer source of faith—that is, a much bigger racket. JoePa was Spencer Tracy in Boys Town and Pat O’Brien in Knute Rockne—All American packed into one blue Windbreaker.

Paterno outlived his usefulness, too old and past-it to restore Penn State to its former on-field glory, but athletes who can still lead their teams to the promised land are given a lot more leeway by fans and microphones, even after they’ve been accused of rape (Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant) or implicated in murder (Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, who now has a second Super Bowl ring to flash in retirement). If Tiger Woods regains his indomitable form, forgiveness will fully flow, and why not? He’s paid the price in shame and humiliation, and, in the absence of a hereafter, public humiliation is hell’s nearest motel. The orchestra is just tuning up for the humiliation that Alex Rodriguez will be hearing this spring. A-Rod may be a rich phony, so why do I feel a little sorry for the guy?